1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a disk chassis and more specifically to a dual bus, multifunction SCSI disk chassis which allows quick configuration of a mass storage device, such as a disk drive, for either one of two SCSI buses without needing to rewire any bus connections.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In today's post-production video editing industry, the use of multiple hard drives for digitally storing non-linear video and audio enclosed within a disk chassis is becoming increasingly more common. For a number of reasons, the disk chassis must be configured according to the needs of the end user. Scheduling changes within a post production facility often require the removal and replacement of hard drives to different interfaces within the same disk chassis or to different systems. Also, the ability to re-use a drive for either audio or video storage based on the project requirements is very advantageous and cost-effective. Most importantly, different projects require different numbers of audio and video drives, respectively. For all of these reasons, a disk chassis which can be easily configured to the end user's needs is desired.
FIG. 1 shows a chassis configuration 11 of the type which is presently used in prior art disk chassis arrangements. This configuration uses two daisy chained SCSI cables to carry audio and video data. Both a SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) audio bus 12 as well as a SCSI video bus 13 are shown. A plurality of connectors 14 for interfacing hard drives with either bus are provided on each daisy chained SCSI cable. Each edge must be wired for either audio or video connection (indicated by dotted lines in FIG. 1) depending on the user's needs. Another common chassis configuration has only one SCSI bus with a backplane.